Brits Going at It Tooth and Nail

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Brits Going at It Tooth and Nail

This story is a hoax. Dozens of news organizations, including Wired News, were duped by pranksters claiming to be practitioners of "toothing," in which strangers in the U.K. were meeting up on commuter trains for clandestine sexual encounters. The liaisons were supposedly organized through messages broadcast via Bluetooth phones and handhelds. However, one of those involved now says the story was an elaborate hoax. After first creating an online forum, the pranksters persuaded friends to fill the site with scores of salacious, but fictitious, stories. It was from the contributors to this forum that Wired News found and interviewed – by email – the subjects of the story.

The Brits sure are randy.

First came dogging, an underground swinging scene where couples and sometimes third or fourth parties engage in public sex for an exhibitionist thrill.

And now comes "toothing," where strangers on trains and buses and at bars and concerts hook up for clandestine sex by text messaging each other with their Bluetooth-enabled cell phones or PDAs.

"I've always loved the idea of random sexual encounters, but have never felt brave enough to go to (sex) parties," says Steve, a toother from Hitchin, England. "The beauty of toothing is that there's no pressure. I was reluctant to send messages at first, but the standard greeting, which I found out from (an online toothing forum) is so innocuous there is no chance of offending anyone by sending a random message."

According to the Beginner's Guide to Toothing, the online FAQ written by a man who calls himself Toothy Toothing, toothing is "a form of anonymous sex with strangers – usually on some form of transport or enclosed area such as a conference or training seminar.... Users 'discover' other computers or phones in the vicinity and then send a speculative message. The usual greeting is: 'Toothing?'"

Toothing takes advantage of the capabilities of Bluetooth, a wireless technology that allows two devices to communicate with each other over short distances. Many mobile phones and PDAs now have built-in Bluetooth functionality and allow users to automatically locate other such devices in their vicinity.

"I live in a commuting town outside London," says Jon, or Toothy Toothing. "The train journey in the morning and evening is slow, tiresome and packed full of miserable people halfheartedly prodding at shiny new tech. You recognize faces within your tiny half-hour community, but you never talk to them."

So last November, Jon remembers, he received a text message on the train from a device called "Angela." That night, he went home and figured out how to respond to incoming text messages and did so the next day.

"Cut a long story short, the messages got more and more flirty – and after a while I had a good idea of who she was, and I think she'd worked out who I was – and a couple of days later she dared me to meet next to the toilets at the mainline station we were heading to. We met, we fucked and toothing was born."

Steve's introduction to toothing was similar. He had just bought himself a new mobile phone when he was pinged by someone on his commuter line. "Bored? Talk to me," the message read.

"I thought it was some kind of SMS spam," says Steve. "I was messing with the phone's settings, trying to work out what to do when I got the second message, 'I can see you struggling. Meet me in the toilet and I'll show you what to do.'"

Intrigued, he says, he did as bid.

"It was unlocked," he remembers. "A girl was ... in there with her shirt undone. 'This beats the crossword,' she said. And we took it from there."

Steve and hundreds, if not thousands, of others have formed a loose-knit community via Jon's Toothing forum. Although the majority of them are men, there are also many women on the forum, such as "Mysterious Girl," "annie 2uesday," "CandyGrrrl" and others. Members discuss the etiquette of toothing, the best locations to hook up with a toothing partner and whom they hope will be the first celebrities to get involved.

Sometimes they even have a little fun with language.

Under a posting titled "3's company?" one member asked, "Anyone got any views on the statistical chance of a toothing threesome? Would it be Threething?"

In any case, toothing seems to give its participants an exercise in figuring out who among a sea of random faces might be both toting a Bluetooth phone and interested in partaking of a little illicit sexual activity.

For some toothers, the challenge is determining the gender and sexual orientation of prospective toothing partners, as the practice is by no means the exclusive province of the straight.

Jon says that when a Bluetooth phone locates another, it can see the name that the device's owner has given it. And most, though not all, toothers use names that in one way or another betray their gender.

"Say you search and see 'Hello Kitty' on the list (of nearby devices)," explains Jon. "Then you can look around and try to match that with someone on the train or in the bar, or whatever. It's more likely to be a girl, but it's not guaranteed. It's part of the game."

And indeed, part of that game for those receiving a toothing request is trying to figure out where the message is coming from.

"Bluetooth is short-range, so (you) know the person's near," says Jon. "But all (you) have is the message and (your) own intuition. The same with the person sending – they don't know who they're sending it to, except for an educated guess based on the phone model (and) device name.... Obviously, when the message arrives, you get some clue from the way people in your vicinity respond: Has someone just checked their phone? Is someone looking quizzically around the carriage? Is someone trying to look for someone looking around the carriage? And so on. It's cat and mouse at first."

Until now, toothing has been mostly a British phenomenon. But Jon recently added a new international toothing category to his forum. And quickly, several people began posting, looking to see if anyone in Mexico, the Czech Republic and elsewhere was into toothing.

Either way, toothers aren't going away. They ride their trains to and from work each day, hoping to find a little excitement amid the drudgery.

"It fills me with a real buzz," says Steve. "Even if you never hook up with someone, there's something exciting about searching for other people's phones.... Plus, it saves trying to chat girls up and getting knocked back. Toothing is immediate; if they're not interested, they won't reply. That's still the majority of people, but I've talked more frequently with other toothers over recent weeks. Maybe the word is finally getting out there."